An interesting question for the press is whether, and if so to what extent,
the documents supporting this claim were forged. This rumour has been knocking
about for a year or two; we might as well drag it out into the sunlight and
see what Authority has to say.

The relevant documents purport to be CESG tech reports. Yet sources say that
at least some of the alleged inventors were working in GCHQ at the time;
in particular, that their boss was Shaun Wylie (a former Trinity Hall fellow,
famous for Hilton and Wylie's `Homology Theory'). In fact, it is not at all
clear that CESG even existed in 1970 under that name (or at all).

So one might expect that the original documents (if any) would have said
GCHQ - or perhaps even `NSA Technical Journal' - but the publicly released
documents say CESG.

The motive for the forgery may be relatively innocent (by the standards of
the espionage trade). In recent years, bureaucrats have held to the fiction
that GCHQ doesn't exist while CESG does, or at the very least that they are
quite separate organisations. For example, the CESG response to the first
draft of our paper attacking Cloud Cover took exception to our describing
it as `the GCHQ protocol'. The purpose of this appears to be to obscure two
facts - that CESG is a part of GCHQ and the director of the latter is the
boss of the director of the former. A wider realisation that the fox was
in charge of the henhouse might inhibit CESG's efforts to market its `IT
Security Healthcheck' services to UK plc.

So, the rumour-mongers ask, what else has been changed? There would presumably
have been more references in the original documents, but redacted as they
pointed to classified material. What else?

If any list member goes to this talk, it might be instructive to ask Cocks
whether he can offer us any information or assurances that might quell this
obviously malicious and paranoid gossip :-)

>Ross Anderson wrote:
>
>>An interesting question for the press is whether, and if so to what
>>extent, the documents supporting this claim were forged. This
rumour
>>has been knocking about for a year or two; we might as well drag
it
>>out into the sunlight and see what Authority has to say.
>
>[snip]
>
>My follow-up question is why didn't they patent it?
>
>Since the whole point is that it is 'non-secret' and knowing the
mechanism
>does not compromise its utility, why be afraid of publishing it?

You have to remember that this work was done in the early '70s when even
the *existence* of GCHQ was supposedly secret.

With regard to the question of whether the documents were forged, Whit Diffie
made no reference to this possibility when he spoke at UCL in April. As I
said in my previous posting, Diffie knew about this work, having had several
conversations about it with Ellis in the early '80s. Although it was still
secret, Diffie seems to have become aware of it through some contact of his
in the NSA. The NSA, unsurprisingly given their relationship with GCHQ, already
knew about the Ellis/Cocks/Williamson work.

The text below is a cut and paste from the Web site. I'm not associated with
the festival or either of the speakers.

Nick

<web text>

Town Hall 2-3pm GBP 6(5)

Simon Singh, author of The Code Book and the best-selling Fermats
Last Theorem, discusses how codes and ciphers have evolved through the
centuries as a result of the struggle between codemakers and codebreakers.

He is joined by Clifford Cocks from CESG at GCHQ who will describe the greatest
breakthrough in codes this century, made in Cheltenham, but kept secret until
recently.